Spawnkilling

[Skymad]

Is there any way to prevent spawnkilling? Last time situations like this happen quite often: you spawn on airport/FARP, and boom, you get immendiately killed by someone in BMP, or other human-controllable vehicle with stupid "hahahaha" on chat. Or for example vehicles blocking taxiway/runway/your wing.

 

Fair fight is fun. Getting constantly spawnkilled/blocked is not. It's pathetic and should be prohibited.

[Revelation]

Maybe you, all pilots on the server, should pay attention and prevent ground units from reaching your airfield?

 

If you don't care enough to protect your airfield why should ED be bothered to "police" the simulated war?

[Skymad]

Well, if I enter the game during mission, then there is nothing I can do, except hitting "disconnect".

 

So if there are 3 players on the server, 2 should patrol above the airfield, and the 3rd should do missions' objective?

Edited August 11, 2012 by Skymad

[Revelation]

Then that is what you have to do, the mission is a loss - from the aircraft perspective.

[cichlidfan]

It sounds like the problem is with the mission design or the players involved. Certainly not something for ED to 'fix'.

[Ripcord]

Poor mission design is all that is.

 

Or are you saying that you are joining a missions that is essentially 'over' and there should be some mechanism to prevent that, eg., only allow players to join missions that just started?

[chokko]

run your own server

install servman

play on your server

kick/ban anyone who is there exclusively to baserape

[dooom]

I'd like to have the Mission Editor expanded to allow for a unit identifier...

 

I.e.

 

Create Zone "SpawnCamp Killer"

 

ONCE-> Part of Coalition inside Zone (SPawCamp Killer) ->Explode unit. Where the unit is the offending client.

 

Unfortunately i can't do this yet - i suppose i could create a trigger like above and simply have the sone invasion trigger a "Mission end" to forfeit the game of the offending side but that would blow as well...

[dooom]

alternatively, you could create a series of Forward observation post zones around the spawn to send a mission alert if an opposing client enters the area...

 

i.e. "Enemy sighted in FOB Mustang" thereby annoucning the threat to all allied players and increasing fun factor to find and lay a vikhr/maverick on them.

 

 

 

hmmmm... i think i like that idea from a gameplay perspective better..

[Ripcord]

I'd like to have the Mission Editor expanded to allow for a unit identifier...

 

I.e.

 

Create Zone "SpawnCamp Killer"

 

ONCE-> Part of Coalition inside Zone (SPawCamp Killer) ->Explode unit. Where the unit is the offending client.

 

Unfortunately i can't do this yet - i suppose i could create a trigger like above and simply have the sone invasion trigger a "Mission end" to forfeit the game of the offending side but that would blow as well...

 

The problem with what you describe here is that would need to know in advance which ground unit is the offending client.

 

As mission builder, would it not be better/simpler to just explode new spawned units after X minutes of time into the mission? Just write it into the MP mission brief -- don't spawn into this mission after X minutes. That way it is highly unlikely, maybe even impossible, for the red side to capture the blue base and be in position to whack blue aircraft that spawn... or no, really what you would need to manage is the ability for clients to spawn at that airbase after X minutes into the start of a mission.

 

Could you not simply DEACTIVATE the Client Flight at the airbase after X minutes/seconds, on the condition that it is (a) still on the ground and (b) has not departed a small trigger zone around the airport. Or better, DEACTIVATE the Client Flight at the base in the event that enemy units have entered that trigger zone -- eg., the base has been overrun.

 

Would that not work?

Edited August 12, 2012 by Ripcord
considered this in ME

[HiJack]

No fly zones is a good choise but inform of it in the briefing. You can also use a good set of SAM sites and secondary protection on those to do the same job. But adding a lot of defence units draws fps from your server so test mission regularly while building.

 

EIT: I used no fly zones in a dogfight mission and it worked fine (in FC2).

 

(HJ)

[Exorcet]

I would add defensive AI and maybe make bases farther from the front lines (though I could see some missions, espcially with choppers where you would be close).

 

If you're really against base invading, couldn't you make the base defense forces immortal and invisible? An invincible, invisible A-10 should be pretty good at defending an airbase.

 

You could also have a back up base and use a trigger to activate client aircraft one the initial base is destroyed. This would allow pilots to get into the air and then clear the lost airbase.

 

In my opinion though, a base can fall. As long as it's not done through a glitch or something crazy it's a part of the mission. The one worrisome thing to me is that it seems as though ground vehicles in DCS can drive at very high speed without much consequence, even on rough terrain.

[Wolf Rider]

dontcha luvit when the kids just wanna have fun?

 

spawnkillers can't be justified as "this is war... bases get suppressed" and there is no way around it really, except by ramping up base defenses unrealistically or banning the spawnkiller's sorry butt.

[Ripcord]

I don't get it -- there is nothing wrong with a player succeeding and capturing his objective. Why is the answer 'prevent the ground player from succeeding'? If they cannot win, why play?

 

We are 'blaming' the wrong party here.... Why should the mission allow more helos/aircraft to spawn once the FARP/airbase has fallen? If you are a client flying MP, then get in and takeoff and join the engagement BEFORE the base falls. The mission should be built to prevent that client from joining at that point.

 

OK hold on, let me get into ME and whip up something to be tested.....

[JG14_Smil]

You are blaming the wrong party, all right. No one enjoys being spawn killed and it has always been like that. A person that connects, then get spawn killed is not going to enjoy their visit to a server, and some will voice their opinion about it.

 

"BEFORE the base falls..."

 

OK , I'll try to get home from work faster next time...

[Wolf Rider]

There's nothing wrong with "claiming the base" either... after the base falls the RED Flag comes down and the BLUE Flag (or vics-versa) goes up.

 

no more spawning at that particular base for the "conquered" (well, at least until it is reclaimed;) )

 

 

 

 

all that, however, is far different to the "spawnkiller" mentality though

[Ripcord]

I think we are all saying the same thing -- sure it's not fun for the guy that connects and get's zapped before he can even adjust his googles. So why host a mission that allows that?

 

One answer is that the ME won't support it -- but I think it will. Just takes some time to build a proper mission that we can test. Gotta travel this week so probably now this will be sorted by the time I get back, but I'm going to experiment with this in any case.

[Angbor]

Yeah, if there isn't the option to enable/disable player spawns then that's a feature that should be looked into adding. Aside from that there isn't really anything ED can do about this. It's up to the people making the missions to account for bases being taken / enemy units being on base. It sounds like the mission you played should have ended and restarted before you were spawn killed, or at least shortly afterwards.

 

I'm all for the idea of having alternate spawn locations. It's a cool strategy to take the enemy's main base causing their air power to have longer fly times to and from their targets. Maybe even setup those alt bases to have crappier bombs, like no mavericks or something similar, so the loss is more apparent and there's more reason to take the main base back.

 

As for having invincible units on the airbase. Unless it's way out of the way, that should be a no no. At least in my opinion, if it's close enough to be attacked, it should be and should be takeable to hinder enemy airpower.

[Cali]

Some of the post in here make me laugh, it sucks being base raped, but that is a part of war. Hopefully the mission designer does a good job. You can't fault someone that destroys all your air defense. I've done this before and have it done to me, you win some and lose some. War is war, I'm not gonna fly in a server that has rules like no fly zone near a human base or a automatic blow up if a unit gets within 10 miles of my base. There should be more then 1 base to start from, like I said, it's how the mission was set up.

[Grimes]

Having "spawn protection" might be possible via advanced waypoint actions. For an aircraft simply default invulnerability on with a stop condition set to a duration of X time.

 

Spawn killing and attacking spawning bases in general is a thin line. I've seen it kill many a servers in FPS's when one side is totally outnumbered and outgunned. In this circumstance, DCS shares much the same upsides and downsides with FPS games. Is it spawn killing if you just kill players on the ground or if you just kill em right as they get airborne? Either way its eventually going to force a player to rage-quit because they are denied playing the game. The only up-side DCS has with spawn killing is that the spawn killers have limited fuel and weapons and must eventually RTB.

 

Further complicating things is combined arms where players can easily sneak through front lines to reach airbases or troll their teammates.

 

But really it comes down to the mission and whats supposed to happen with it... Its quite common to have airbases that are simply meant for spawning, rearming, repairing, and refueling where all of the fighting and objectives take place somewhere else. On the other hand there are missions where taking out an enemy base is encouraged or is part of the mission. However some circumstances simply don't allow you to place additional aircraft at other airbases. It could simply be location (Tblisi/Anapa backed against a wall) or that the mission has triggers related to each flight and the amount of work to create the mission quickly sky-rockets.

[Druid_]

If the enemy has unopposed ground units at your airfield then its lost. The enemy has control over it until such time you can destroy the enemy ground units at that airfield and either land at it or have your ground units capture it.

 

From a Mission editor perspective I would have clients then spawn at an airfield further away from the 'front line' and certainly not at that airbase again.

 

Spawning clients is something being looked at and has been mentioned by various testers. At the moment the problem is that even un-activated clients are shown in the join screen which makes it a little messy and confusing.

 

So in short. Mission builders should check the occupier of an airfield. Spawn relevant units/clients there. Once airfield is taken by the enemy they should then spawn units at the next closest allied airfield and so on. Finally when all of a sides airfields in the mission scenario are taken then its 'Mission Over ... Red/Blue side wins".

[Frostie]

It's only a problem because party 'A' want to fly only A-10 for example while party 'B' want to do CA, but the mission they're in doesn't allow these two to operate PvP on an advanced level, because as the sim adds more modules then the more scope for player demands and battle strategies occurs.

 

In an A-10 only server, which most are used to, it's simple, you take off and destroy AI ground units, for the most part everyone has the same agenda. When you add different modules then it is upto the mission designers to account for this and realise that if their mission is set up as a PvP encounter then the war has become much more complex, there is suddenly a lot of diversity in strategy and personal/group objectives. Poorly defended bases will get attacked, back up plans are needed and missions need to be tailored to suit all expected participants.

[diveplane]

Maybe you, all pilots on the server, should pay attention and prevent ground units from reaching your airfield?

 

If you don't care enough to protect your airfield why should ED be bothered to "police" the simulated war?

 

lol

[Ripcord]

It's only a problem because party 'A' want to fly only A-10 for example while party 'B' want to do CA, but the mission they're in doesn't allow these two to operate PvP on an advanced level, because as the sim adds more modules then the more scope for player demands and battle strategies occurs.

 

In an A-10 only server, which most are used to, it's simple, you take off and destroy AI ground units, for the most part everyone has the same agenda. When you add different modules then it is upto the mission designers to account for this and realise that if their mission is set up as a PvP encounter then the war has become much more complex, there is suddenly a lot of diversity in strategy and personal/group objectives. Poorly defended bases will get attacked, back up plans are needed and missions need to be tailored to suit all expected participants.

 

This is really a very good comment/post here, and it illustrates much how much CA changes the game. A-10C missions, the way we knew them, were perhaps a bit limited in that you took off, destroyed your AI ground units and that was about all you could do. But really, that CAS mission should have been just one part of a larger operation going on, eg,. a war is happening down there, with a moving FLOT and objectives that are larger than just me flying this hop. I hate to invoke the F4 name here, but that was ever-present in almost any mission or TE that you flew.

 

Now with CA, I think the mission builder HAS to be mindful of this -- is the mission won for the Player Flight A when he kills X, Y and Z? Or is the mission won for the BLUE side when they reach village ABC or capture some other objective? Maybe the hog flight kills it's targets but the enemy still overruns friendly positions? Interesting to consider, really.

[Ripcord]

Alright, here is one way of doing this -- I haven't tried it in MP but it worked in SP. I'd like for some folks to try it out in MP, just to ensure that it behaves as expected.

 

Simply put, the Player/Client flights are deactivated when the enemy forces get within a certain radius of the airbase. They are NOT deactivated, however, provided that the flight is able to start up and get moving at a minimal speed (10 mph). This way our players that do spawn and take off in time are not deactivated.

 

AFAIK this should prevent somebody from joining as a pilot leading any of these flights - alfa, bravo or charlie -- once the base has been overrrun -- or really, just one the enemy forces get close enough to really do damage.

 

Please PM me or post here if something does not quite work as expected. Again, since this is just for testing purposes, I did not build in the triggers for the red FARP, just for the Blue flights at Senaki. The reason I added so many units is that I've been testing other features and who knows, maybe this thing will develop into a worthy MP mission.

 

Another simpler way to do this same thing is to run a timer -- basically do not allow anybody to join these flights (deactivate them) after some period of time, probably 20-30 minutes. This would allow players/clients a reasonable amount of time to run thru the startup procedures and get rolling before any enemy forces would be physically able to crash thru the front lines and reach the base. If the player is rolling (at a minimum speed) within the 20-30 minute start up window, then that flight would not be deactivated, and they flight the mission as normal. Otherwise, all player/client flights get deactivated when the timer runs out.

 

The down side is that players have to start/spawn at more or less the same time, but I don't really view that as a negative -- others might.

MPbasespawn_test.miz